And by “gay,” I definitely mean “happy.” Look at the little spud, frozen mid-stride in a moment of pure ghost-running bliss. As a continuation of last week’s Retro Scan, here are two pages from the manual of the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man. The game itself was a terrible translation of the arcade hit (for Pac-Man done right on the 2600, see Ms. Pac-Man). The graphics were so bad that the manual tells you about the “video wafers” (lines, in lieu of pellets) that Pac-Man eats in this game. Also, the bonus fruit have become “vitamins” — because they’re square.

I wonder if Pac-Man would be so happy if he knew that Atari would be burying thousands (if not millions) of copies of his game in a landfill a few years later.

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I always loved how the power pills and wafers looked as a kid. I always wanted to eat the items as drawn in this booklet.

I also remember joking about this game with my older brother a lot, and actually, it still gets laughs when I bring it up. All I have to do is imitate the sounds from the game…DO DEE DO-DOO wak wak wak wak…wak wak…